Nearly 60 people from Cuba have arrived in the Florida Keys in six migrant groups
Six groups of people from Cuba arrived in the Florida Keys over the weekend and Monday, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. In all, 58 people from Cuba arrived up and down the island chain in rustic vessels, said Adam Hoffner, division chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Miami operations.
Around 5 a.m. Monday, 15 people came ashore at the Southernmost Point landmark buoy in Key West aboard a homemade boat, Hoffner said. They told agents they left the Artemisa region of Cuba two days before.
Sunday brought four separate arrivals — 10 people on Sombrero
Beach in the Middle Keys city of Marathon; 14 people in the Upper Keys Village of Islamorada, four people in Stock Island; and 12 people, including five children, on Smathers Beach in Key West, Hoffner said.
And, on Saturday, three men came ashore at Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park in Key West in a 10-foot homemade vessel, Hoffner said.
The arrivals of the six separate groups are part of an ongoing surge in maritime migration to South Florida from Cuba and Haiti. Since Oct. 1, the Border Patrol said 104 groups of migrants from both countries have come ashore in Florida.
And the Coast Guard said it has stopped 1,689 people at sea from Cuba since the beginning of October, the most interceptions of migrants from the communist nation the service has conducted in seven years.
Since Saturday, the
Coast Guard returned 136 people to Cuba who were caught at sea during several different stops between last Sunday and Friday.
On Monday, the Coast Guard said it turned over 62 people from Haiti to Bahamian authorities the agency said it stopped about 75 miles southeast of Key Largo a week ago.
The migrants were in an overloaded sailboat when first spotted by the crew of a Coast Guard HC-144 airplane, the agency said in a news release.
More Haitians are taking to the seas to flee economic, political and life-safety instability than they have in 14 years, the Coast Guard said. Since Oct. 1, crews have stopped 4,237 Haitians on the water.
‘DON’T ATTEMPT THE CROSSING OF THE STRAITS’
The Cuban regime is encouraging people to attempt the perilous journey across the Florida Straits, according to Ramón Saúl Sánchez, leader of the Miami-based group Democracy Movement.
Supporting the exodus,
Sanchez said, is a political game in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“It creates a problem only a few months from the midterm elections in the backyard of the United States,” Sánchez said Monday, during a meeting in Key West with U.S.
Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg, who is running for governor.
“It’s a way of the Cuban regime assisting the Russians with creating a conflict with its eternal enemy, the United States,” Sánchez said.
Crist said very little during the meeting at Key West City Hall which was attended by the city’s Mayor Teri Johnston, other than to tell Sánchez he is a hero.
“You’ve put your life on the line to advocate for your people and their freedom,” Crist told him.
Sánchez said the at-sea migration attempts by Cubans will continue to rise.
“People are so desperate in Cuba,” Sánchez said. “Sometimes they don’t have water. Every day, they shut off the electricity for hours. No medication.”
Sánchez asked that the government and the Keys community to organize now to prepare to help in case of an emergency involving migrants.
He also said U.S. officials, like the Coast
Guard, are not properly interviewing Cuban migrants who are taken into
custody after arriving in the Keys.
“They are supposed to interview for fear of persecution, but they don’t,” Sánchez said. “The interview is not happening and the cases that do happen, they’re insufficient. Sometimes, they don’t even speak Spanish. Rafters who leave Cuba don’t know that under international law they have some rights for political asylum. We’re asking for the process to be either videotaped or done with Zoom or some kind of video teleconferencing.”
Sánchez said he tells Cubans every day not to get on a vessel headed for Florida.
“As a human being, I have to say to them, please don’t attempt the crossing of the Straits,” he said.
Cubans also want the bodies of their relatives found dead in the ocean returned home, Sánchez said. One mother is waiting for word on whether
her son’s remains can be sent to her in Cuba.
“She’s pleading for the body to be sent back to Cuba,” he said. “Right now, red tape and the cost, $9,000, makes it impossible to do that. In two cases of rafters’ bodies, we’ve washed cars to get money together.”
BODY RECOVERED
Highlighting the dangers of at-sea crossings, the Coast Guard said Monday that the crew of one of its cutters, the Joseph Napier, recovered the body of a woman Saturday who was part of a group of 69 migrants whose boat capsized in the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.
The Joseph Napier’s crew rescued 58 people from that group from the water, according to a
Coast Guard press release. The Dominican Republic Navy rescued another 12 people.
A Coast Guard public information officer said
Monday the migrants’ nationalities were not immediately known.
All of the migrants, and the deceased woman, were transferred to the custody of the Dominican Republic Navy, according to the press release.
“We are saddened that one life was lost in this complex and dangerous rescue, but also proud and thankful for the actions taken by the Coast Guard and Dominican Republic Navy crews, which led to saving 68 lives,” Capt. Jose E. Diaz, acting commander of U.S. Coast Guard Sector San Juan, said in a statement. “To anyone thinking of taking part in an illegal voyage, do not take to the sea! These voyages are highly dangerous, and could cost you your life, the life of a loved one or the lives of everyone else in the voyage.”